Every Other Weekend

by Abigail Johnson

  “You’re still mine.”

  Relieved, I stood up—super weird feeling when you can’t feel your butt. “Then let’s make it not weird. Let’s do something.”

  He looked up. “Like what?”

  “Well, we’re broke and there is a blizzard outside, so the options are endless. I spent all my brainpower solving your problem, so this one’s on you.”

  “My problem? I didn’t even know it was a problem until you went off about it.”

  “Oh, please.” I grinned. “That whole thing would have blown up in your face the second you accidentally kissed me.”

  Adam’s eyebrows shot up and so did he. “I was going to accidentally kiss you?”

  “I don’t know. Probably. Then I’d have to slap you, because you’d be making me into the ‘other woman’ and Erica would show up at my house in the middle of the night and we’d get into a fight—that I would win, by the way—and then we’d realize that you’re the one we’re mad at, so we’d egg your house, and then your mom would find out and she’d never look at you the same way again, and then...” I made an explosion sound.

  Adam started slowly down the stairs, one step at a time like he was in a trance. “I’ve made a huge mistake. Maybe there’s still time if I call Erica right now and—” He grunted, then started laughing when I leaped onto his back. “I’ll tell her how you threw yourself at me, and beg for her help.” He locked his hands under my knees when I would have let go and hoisted me higher onto his back. “And there is no way you’d win in a fight with Erica. You’re like a buck ten soaking wet, and I’m betting most of that is your hair. She’d snap you in half.”

  We were both grinning now. I almost said weirdness adverted but that would have been weird. “This, right here,” I said, as he started jumping down the stairs in a way that bounced me up and down with each step and added a staccato to my words. “We couldn’t—do this—if you had—a girlfriend.”

  “A friend can’t give another friend a piggyback ride?”

  “Not if he has a girlfriend. Not unless he’s a scummy boyfriend.”

  “I don’t, and I’m not. So hold on.”

  ADAM

  On Saturday morning, Dad was already up when I wandered into the kitchen.

  “Morning. Coffee?”

  “Yeah, hey.” I grabbed a mug from the cabinet and held it out for him to pour.

  “I was thinking we could go to the rink today and play a little ice hockey.”

  “I’m hanging out with Jolene.” I turned to take my coffee back to my room, but Dad stopped me.

  “Why don’t you come with Jeremy and me? You love playing.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Adam.” Just my name. I turned to him. “I thought we were turning a corner after last month. Are you ever gonna let up on me? I mean, ever?”

  “What do you want from me, Dad?”

  “For starters, I want you to come play hockey with your brother and me.” He slammed his own mug down on the counter, and coffee splashed over the edge. “I never see you. I get you for a few days a month, and you spend them in your room or with the girl next door.”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  “I’m trying here. I need you to try, too.”

  “Yeah, you tried real hard.” I held my arms out and gestured around the room. “Look how hard you’re trying.”

  “I’m doing the best I can.”

  “No, you’re not. Your best is all of us home together. Mom not alone. Jeremy and me not living out of suitcases. This is pathetic. You’re not trying, so why should I?”

  “Adam.” He let his head drop forward. “You don’t—”

  “No, forget it. It doesn’t matter. Nothing you say is going to matter.”

  “And that’s you trying?”

  “No. That’s me not giving a—”

  Dad’s head snapped up when I started that particular phrase, and the way his eyes widened and then narrowed took some of my bluster.

  I finished with “Crap.”

  But he knew what I’d been going to say, what one look from him had quelled. I wasn’t nearly as indifferent to him as I claimed.

  He took his victory—and his half-spilled mug of coffee—and went into his room. I had no time to reflect on any of that before I saw Jeremy sit up on the couch.

  “What are you going to do when he really stops trying?”

  I sipped my coffee.

  “Yeah, you’re so cool. I keep forgetting.” He threw off his blanket, and his back cracked when he stood up from the couch.

  “Sleep well?” It was a rhetorical question. The couch was more of a love seat.

  Jeremy lumbered past me to the bathroom. He never bothered to shut the door even at home, but this bathroom’s proximity to the kitchen made it especially grating. I kicked the door shut when he started to piss.

  “So are you really not coming today?” Jeremy asked when he came out.

  “I have plans.”

  “I heard. That girl again. Jolene. She’s cute,” he went on. “I’ll give you that, but Erica Porter.” Jeremy shook his head. “You’re either the biggest moron on the planet or... No, you’re pretty much the biggest moron on the planet.”

  I almost told him it wasn’t like that with Jolene and me, but that smacked too much of having an actual conversation and we weren’t having a ton of those lately.

  “Oh, so you’re not talking to me either now?”

  “I’m talking. I asked how you slept.”

  Jeremy muttered something and poured himself a bowl of Apple Jacks. “Tell me about your girl,” he said between bites. “I already know you ditched Erica for her.” He shook his head at that one.

  “I didn’t ditch anybody for anybody. We broke up, that’s all. Besides, I was barely with Erica.”

  “Half the school saw her slap you.”

  I said nothing.

  “Oh, come on.” Jeremy lowered his spoon. “You’ve wanted to be with her since forever. You get her, and then you screw it up in less than two months?” He took another bite. “That’s a waste.”

  “Not to me.” And it wasn’t. I worried that I might feel a little regret the next time I thought about Erica, but the only thing I regretted was how we broke up, not why. Even if Jolene had seemed nervous instead of happy when I told her I wasn’t with Erica anymore. I wasn’t expecting her to leap on me and start kissing me—well, she had leaped on me, but the kissing part hadn’t happened yet. I was really hoping it would though. I just needed to show Jolene that being more than friends was a good idea, and I couldn’t do that if I kept wasting what little time we had every other weekend talking with my brother.

  “You hear Mark Phillips asked her to the winter formal yesterday? She said no. Like, wait two seconds, you psycho.”

  “She can go out with whoever. Ask her yourself if you want.” The idea bothered me a little, but much less than I would have thought possible a few months ago.

  Jeremy snorted, then paused like he was considering how serious I was. “You really like this girl.” He sounded impressed. I guess he would be. Jeremy had had a couple girlfriends, but he would have pushed either of them from a moving car for the chance I’d had. I knew this, because he’d told me in those exact words when I’d first started hanging out with Erica.

  “Your biggest mistake—well, your second-biggest mistake—was telling Mom. She’s going to be all over you. She’s already been pumping me for info. Like I don’t have better things to do than watch you over here.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Yeah, but she doesn’t know that. I keep telling her about all this stuff we’re doing with Dad and—”

  “Wait, you’re what?”

  “Telling her about all this stuff we’re doing, which, you know, we’re not, but she doesn’t need to know that.”
>
  I dropped both hands on the counter and leaned toward my brother, who was still shoveling cereal into his mouth like someone might take the bowl from him at any second. “Yes, she does.”

  Jeremy paused between bites.

  “She’s...she’s...” It took me a minute to find the words. “She’s so afraid that she’s losing us. That we’re not going to come home one day. She lost Greg, then Dad. She panics every second we’re away. How do you not know that?”

  When Jeremy just stared at his bowl, I knocked it away into the sink. “You’d know that if you talked to her, if you called her or sent or a text or something while we’re over here. And you’ve been rubbing it in her face that it’s awesome over here with Dad?” I pushed away from the counter in disgust. “Have fun playing hockey.”

  I grabbed my coat and let the door slam when I left.

  Jolene

  “Curse this winter.” I shook my fist at the flurry-filled sky. At least three inches of snow crunched under my boots.

  “You could walk on the sidewalk,” Adam said. He was wearing sneakers, and they looked mostly dry because he’d taken his own advice while I preferred to trudge alongside him in the snow-covered grass, or what would be grass when spring came. If spring ever came.

  “Not because of the snow. Who doesn’t like snow?”

  “The entire driving population.”

  “So not you then?” I grinned, and Adam kicked a spray of snow at me. “Oh, come on.” I stretched up to sling my arm over his shoulder, loving the fact that I could touch him without feeling guilty about it. “I promise to drive you anywhere you want when I get my license. You won’t have to worry your pretty little head about anything.”

  Adam was a whole two weeks younger than me. In less than a month, I’d be sixteen and free, relatively. Those weeks ate at him incessantly.

  “So why are you cursing the winter again?” he asked.

  I knew he was trying to pull the conversation away from his driver’s license-challenged state, and since I didn’t want him to get all moody, I let him. “Duh, because of your hat.”

  Adam had this expression where he would curl one side of his mouth up and frown whenever something made no sense to him, as if he were questioning the intelligence of whoever had said it. He could be arrogant like that sometimes. I knew he was still chafing over the driving thing, so for once, I didn’t call him on it. I did, however, explain myself to him in a super patronizing way.

  “When it’s cold out, your nose and cheeks turn red.” I tapped his nose. “But your ears are hidden under your knit cap.” I lifted it and lightly pinched his ear. “See? Nice and toasty.”

  Adam leaned away and pulled his hat back down over his ear. “Right. ’Cause it’s cold.”

  “But I can’t see your ears. How am I supposed to know when you’re embarrassed? The rest of your exposed skin is all rosy and—don’t scowl, Adam, it’s very fetching—but I feel like I can’t read you. It’s frustrating, hence the winter cursing.”

  Adam’s scowl lingered for a second longer as he looked down at me, but it smoothed out. “You’re such a strange girl.”

  “You’re still thinking about the fact that I said you were fetching, aren’t you?” Then, before he could stop me, I yanked off his cap and was rewarded with the sight of ears flushing bright red. “Ha! I knew it!” When Adam tried to reach for his cap, I held it above my head, which made him laugh.

  “You know you’re only making it easier for me.”

  I looked up. With my arm stretched up, the hat was well within his freakishly long grasp. I dropped my hand as he lunged. When I tried to step back, I sank into a drift that sent me sprawling, or would have if Adam hadn’t looped his arm around my waist and pulled me up.

  “Gotcha.” Red ears and cheeks filled my vision. And his smile, too, 100 percent scowl-free. My heart whooped inside me and started pounding at the feel of being in his arms.

  I thought about kissing him then. I hadn’t had a ton of kisses to compare it to, but apart from the cold, my wildly beating heart was betting that kissing Adam Moynihan would be rather nice. He smelled nice. Crisp, with that super clean, fresh-snow smell, but also a bit like the cologne he’d let me spray on him at the mall earlier. It had some fancy name, but it basically smelled like a Christmas tree.

  I pulled away before I did something I’d regret, and then I was the one frowning. Not in his you-must-be-stupid way, but in a truly puzzled way.

  “What just happened?” he asked out loud, just as I was posing the same question silently to myself.

  “Nothing. I had a random thought.” I shook my head, trying to clear it from wondering how soft his lips would be.

  We started walking again, him on the sidewalk, me in the snow. I kept glancing at him and not covertly either.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You look different to me.”

  “You’re kind of making me uncomfortable.”

  “Sorry.” I was, but I didn’t look away from him. When he stopped suddenly and sighed, I turned my head straight ahead. “Okay, okay. Eyes to the front.”

  We walked another half a block. We were supposed to be heading to Wa-Wa for hot chocolate, but I would have walked right past the store if Adam hadn’t caught my sleeve.

  “Don’t you want hot chocolate?”

  “Yeah. Lead on.”

  Adam was the one who liked hot chocolate. It was too sweet for me, but I enjoyed holding the cup to my nose and letting the steam and scent wrap around me. Back outside, I was doing just that when it finally hit me. “It’s because of Erica,” I said, relieved to realize where the impulse to kiss him had come from. “Well, and the fact that I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night.”

  Adam stopped walking. “Um, what’s because of Erica?”

  “I had this impulse to kiss you a minute ago and I couldn’t figure out where—”

  “Wait. You wanted to kiss me? Just now?”

  I started walking again, and Adam hesitated before joining me. Visible ears or not, I could tell he was embarrassed based on the way he’d hunched his shoulders against a nonexistent breeze. “No, it’s fine. I mean, I obviously didn’t. And then I realized it’s probably because you broke up with your girlfriend yesterday, and then last night I was watching Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in this bizarrely surreal romance in the snow.” I gestured around us with my cocoa. “I can’t believe I told you that I thought about kissing you.”

  When Adam didn’t respond, I was the one who sighed. “Okay, you have to tell me what you’re thinking, because I can’t see your ears and it’s like I’ve only got four senses.”

  “It’s fine, Jo. I mean it’s not like I haven’t thought about kissing you.”

  That time when he kept walking, I was the one who fell behind. I felt my face shift like someone had asked me explain the plot of a Darren Aronofsky movie. “When?”

  “I don’t know. A few times, I guess.”

  “Cryptic much? When?” When he didn’t answer, I relented. “Just the first time then.”

  “When we took that first picture for my mom,” he said at last.

  “That was like the first time we met.” I laughed, covering for the tingling heat blazing through me. “You didn’t even like me then and you wanted to kiss me?” I almost said, I don’t even want to know what you want to do with me now, but even I had enough self-control to hold that back.

  “I thought you were pretty,” he said. “You are pretty.”

  My glance was covert that time. He hadn’t put his cap back on, and I could see his ears—not even the slightest bit pink.

  Mine flushed hot.

  Then his mouth lifted up on one side. “And there was a moment when you stopped talking—I mean, it was a tiny moment.” He held his thumb and index finger close together. “And I wondered what
it’d be like to kiss you.” He dropped his hand. “But then you were talking about licking my face and...” He shrugged and made a face.

  I pushed him, and he laughed. “At least my impulse came after I actually liked you as a person. I mean, talk about shallow.”

  He chucked his empty cup into a nearby trash can and held his hand out for my full-but-no-longer-hot cocoa. “You know, it’s stupid to keep buying this if you aren’t going to drink it.”

  “Like $0.65 is really going to kill me. Besides, it warms my hands.”

  “So do gloves. Okay, your turn. Why’d you want to kiss me?” he asked.

  I let my boots kick up clumps of snow as we walked. “It was just this idea. One second I was about to eat a face full of snow, and the next, you were catching me. And then you were right there, like inches from me with your arm still holding me. If we were in a movie, that would have been the perfect moment for a kiss.”

  Next to me, Adam nodded, but he was fighting another frown.

  “No, come on. Nobody kissed anybody. We’re just talking, sharing the random stuff that sometimes flies through our minds. That’s what friends do.”

  Adam’s frown smoothed. “Well, what if I wan—” But his words kind strangled off as his gaze drifted past me and locked. I saw the blood drain from his face, and I turned to see a pale, black-haired guy with strikingly dark eyes walking toward a navy Jeep with a coffee in one hand and keys in the other. He looked to be a few years older than us, and he went still when he saw us.

  “Adam?” I asked.

  He didn’t respond, just started moving toward the guy, who had changed course and was heading directly toward Adam, too. I started to worry that they were going to charge each other, because neither appeared to be slowing down, but instead of colliding, they embraced, hands clapping on each other’s backs like brothers.